The essence of Jesus’ mission was to save the individual life of every person who chooses to put his or her trust in him. He didn’t just point the way to a set of ideals or moral principles as many other teachers did. Rather, he promised when we were “born again by his Spirit” he would come to live inside of us guiding and empowering us to live meaningful and godly lives.
Prior to the New Testament, women labored in harsh, subservient roles, and were often nothing more than slaves to men and their families. Jesus’s teachings and example reconfirmed the truth that in every way, women are of equal worth as men in God’s sight. Christian truths of submission, equal worth, partnership, equality, and self- sacrificing love gave harmony and protection to family relationships that over hundreds of years became the foundation of Western civilization and culture.
The Church transformed the Roman Empire, rescued “learning” from the destruction of the Middle Ages, raised Europe out of barbarism, pioneered the New World, and sent Christian civilization to the ends of the earth. Even today, without the compassion, evangelism, humanitarianism, and social justice works of the Church in scores of nations, the lives of millions would be without hope.
Prior to the Christian faith, people lived in perpetual fear of massacres and tyrants. A town could be here one day and be burned to the ground the next. Power and fear ruled human societies for much of human history. With the coming of Christ, the biblical role of civil government began to emerge through the Magna Carta, British common law, republican governments, democratic principles, and human rights.
The world would have lost much of the great literature of Greece and Rome and other civilizations of the ancient world if it weren’t for the Christian monks who preserved that knowledge through finding, preserving, and copying ancient writings during the Middle Ages. The first universities in Paris and London were started by believers who had a thirst for knowledge and wisdom. The first 120 universities in America, beginning with Harvard, were started by followers of Christ for the advancement of the Christian faith.
It was Christian civilization that proposed that “design points to a Designer” and that man was placed on the earth to discover God’s secrets in nature and use those discoveries to benefit people. From Galileo to Farady, from Pascal to Einstein, many of the leading scientists of the past and present have been people of faith who used their trust in God to reveal the mysteries of his creation. Visiting the Kennedy Space Center one is awestruck at the technology and scientific genius that put men on the moon.
“God is love,” and Jesus’s horrific suffering on behalf of sinful people showed the world once and for all that God cares for each one of us and provided a way out of our guilt and self-destruction. For 2000 years, followers of the loving Christ have carried his compassion and care to people everywhere. The majority of hospitals and other ministries of compassion around the globe have been launched in his name. Where there has been devastation through natural disasters, wars, or famine, people filled with God’s love have run to alleviate human suffering via the Red Cross, World Vision, and thousands of other agencies. Where would our world be without the love of Christ as expressed through his people?
